Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were the most talked about celebrity couple, having gotten together in 2010 and breaking up in March 2018. During one of their “off” periods in 2014, Justin was spotted at a church event with his now-wife Hailey Baldwin, which sparked rumors the two were romantically linked. Finally, Hailey has responded to claims she “stole” Justin from Selena in a tell-all interview.
In the podcast Call Her Daddy episode which aired on Spotify on September 28, 2022, host Alex Cooper broaches the topic of Hailey and Justin’s relationship, including why there was so much backlash to their engagement online. “The timing was obviously very rapid and very fast. Which now, being four years past that, I totally get that. It seemed really drastic and really crazy. It felt correct for the two of us at the time and clearly, we were right because here we are four years later,” Hailey explained, and alluded to the controversy over Justin’s breakup with Selena.
Alex got a little more direct with her line of questioning after that, mentioning how “confused” people were about the timeline Hailey was talking about. “Your husband was in a very public relationship [with Selena Gomez]. People were obsessed with them being together.” She then asked the million-dollar question: “Were you ever with Justin, romantically, at the same time as her?” Hailey paused for a moment. “No, not one time… When he and I started hooking up or anything of that sort, he was not ever in a relationship. Ever. At any point. It’s not my character to mess with someone’s relationship, I was raised better than that.” Hailey stressed. “A lot of the hate comes from like, ‘Oh you stole him’ and the fact that he wished he ended up with someone else. And that’s fine, you can wish that all you want, but it’s not the case.” She continued: “I understand how it looks from the outside, but that was a situation where I know for a fact that it was the right thing for [Justin and Selena] to close that door, but of course, there’s a very long history there and I respect that a lot,” she explained.
The conversation involved a discussion about how Hailey has handled being in the spotlight. “How has being married to someone with that level of fame impacted your identity?” the host asked to which Hailey exhales and sighs loudly. “Where do I start?” The interview then cuts to footage of Hailey and Justin walking the red carpet at the Met Gala in 2021 with an audio overlay of Selena fans heckling Hailey rather aggressively.
Hailey and Justin Bieber’s relationship timeline
Hailey and Justin had a rocky start to their relationship. They were actually introduced back in 2009 by Hailey’s dad, the actor Stephen Baldwin, but Justin was with Selena at the time. Hailey and Justin met again in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2016 during one of Justin’s breaks from Selena that rumors of a budding romance between Justin and Hailey began to circulate. At the end of 2015, Hailey and Justin’s flirty interactions were documented on Instagram. It all came to a head when Justin shared a photo of locking lips with Hailey in 2016 and their romance was seemingly confirmed.
In an interview with GQ, Justin contemplated his relationship with Hailey, suggesting at that time he wasn’t sure about their future and didn’t want to lead her on (and he predicted their marriage in doing so). “What if Hailey ends up being the girl I’m gonna marry, right?” he said. “If I rush into anything, if I damage her, then it’s always gonna be damaged. It’s really hard to fix wounds like that. It’s so hard.… I just don’t want to hurt her.” As for his relationship with Selena at the time, was as you’d expect from exes. “We don’t talk often, but we’re cordial,” he told GQ. “If she needs something, I’m there for her. If I need something, she’s there for me.”
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Somewhere between 2016 and 2018, Hailey and Justin would break up and the Canadian pop star would infamously reignite his relationship with Selena. Hailey and Justin transitioned to being on non-speaking terms; she even told The Times: “We went through a long period of time when we weren’t friends. We didn’t speak for quite some time, and there was a lot of weirdness that went on. We’ve moved past that.”
Obviously, the couple had unfinished business because, in 2018, Justin proposed during an intimate vacation to the Bahamas. Justin shared the news via Instagram after the tabloids had picked up on the story, noting in a very long caption: “Was gonna wait a while to say anything but word travels fast, listen plain and simple Hailey I am soooo in love with everything about you! So committed to spending my life getting to know every single part of you loving you patiently and kindly.” They married in a courthouse wedding in September 2018, just four months after reuniting and two months after announcing their engagement. A year later, they celebrated their love again at their second wedding in South Carolina.
As for Selena, she’s not seeing anyone. She described the messy breakup with Justin as “really tough” in an interview with Seventeen in 2022 but she’s at peace with everything now. “Being on the other side of it, I have to be honest, it’s actually been really good for me. It allowed me to develop a character where I don’t tolerate any sort of nonsense or disrespect in any way, and I’m really proud of how I came out of it.” She continued, “By all means, I don’t have life figured out,” she added, “But I do know that during that time I was learning so much about myself.”
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